Cajun Rice Recipe 2.0

Cajun Rice 2.0

Cajun Rice! Enjoy with or without fresh cilantro!

Who doesn’t love a hearty, flavourful one-pot rice dish?! The beauty of this dish is that it is very easy to make it your own, and it can serve as a great side dish or quick meal. It’s savoury with a little bit of sweet and heat, and very satisfying when you’ve craving a carb fix.

So full disclosure to any Cajun aficionados, I will straight up declare that this is not “authentic “ dirty rice. What is Cajun Dirty rice? My first experience of this delightful bowl of deliciousness was in my teens when I ”discovered“ Popeye’s Louisiana Fried Chicken. They had this tiny bowl of rice and ground beef with a little bit of spice magic and a few flecks of some mysterious greenery throw in. I quite enjoyed it and set out to duplicate the recipe so I could enjoy it any time, while avoiding the siren call of crispy, juicy fried chicken.

Fast forward a few years, and I had created my own version of Cajun Rice… which bore only a passing resemblance to what I thought of as the “real” thing. It consisted only of ground beef flavoured with some spices and a pot of basmati rice cooked in onion soup mix studded with little yellow bursts of sweet corn. I loved this dish doused in Louisiana style hot sauce with a handful of fresh cilantro thrown in. Fast forward a couple of decades, and enter chef extraordinaire of all things Cajun (in my humble opinion) Mr. Isaac Toups. In researching the history of Cajun cooking, I came across his cookbook "Chasing The Gator - Isaac Toups and the New Cajun Cooking" (no affiliation). Not gonna lie, there are some things about Cajun cooking that are far outside my comfort zone - hogs head, chicken hearts, tripe to name a few. But chef Toups is, in his words, 100% Cajun. So, he is expert territory in my mind.

Toups' recipe is 3 parts: It starts with the quintessential Cajun base: a roux, slowly toasted to a rich, deep brown colour; part 2 is all about the ground beef, and part 3 is beautiful, fluffy white rice, delicately flavoured with bay leaves. Then the whole glorious mess is topped with vibrant, fresh green onion tops. And to be fair, there are several versions of this recipe out there - you can change up the meats, garnishes, holy trinity veggies - anything but the roux.

My original copy-cat version did not use a roux - but when I tried Chef Toup's recipe, I was blown away. This recipe I'm sharing with you is my original recipe, but made immeasurably better with the addition of the roux and beer featured in Toup's basic recipe. I hope you like it.

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Cajun Rice Recipe 2.0

Meat

Once the ground beef is browned, add your spices and stir for about 3 minutes!

1lb lean ground beef (Note 1)

1 cup finely diced onion

4 cloves garlic minced

1 ½ tsp cumin

1 ½ tsp coriander

½ tsp chili powder

½ tsp paprika

2 tsp tomato paste

1/3 cup amber beer (Note 2)

¾ tsp salt

1) Heat the oil over med high heat until shimmering. Add the onions and stir occasionally. Continue cooking until lightly browned (11-13 minutes), and then add the ground beef. 2) Saute ground beef until it starts to gain some colour and a fond develops at the bottom. Add the beer and deglaze. 3) Add the tomato paste and cook until it starts to darken (1-2 min); add the spices and cook for 30 seconds to allow them to bloom. Then add the garlic and continue frying for 2-3 minutes. 4) Remove from heat and set aside.

Sauce

Tasty, unctuous sauce with poblanos makes this rice dish moist and delicious!

¼ cup grapeseed oil

¼ cup AP flour

½ cup chopped onions

½ cup chopped poblanos (Note 3)

¼ cup chopped celery

4 cloves garlic minced

1/3 cup amber beer

1 cup chicken stock

1) Combine oil and flour and cook over medium heat stirring frequently until the roux reaches the colour of chocolate milk.

2) Add the onions, pepper and celery and fry for one minute. Add the garlic and friy for one minute. 3) Add the beer and deglaze for about 1 minute. 4) Add 1/3 cup of chicken stock and mix until incorporated; continue to the stock 1/3 cup at a time, stirring to incorporated each time 5) Continue cooking over medium heat and let the sauce thicken until it coats the back of a spoon. 6) Add the ground beef to the sauce, bring to a simmer, cover and cook for 45 minutes.

Rice

2 cups medium grain rice (Note 4)

2 cups frozen corn

1 pouch onion soup mix

3 ¼ cups water

1) Wash the rice in a strainer under cold water several times, until the water runs relatively clear. Add to the rice cooker. 2) Add the corn, onion soup mix and water. 3) Set the rice cooker. Once cooked, remove from the cooker into a casserole dish, fluff and allow to cool.

Assembly

Putting it all together!

1 cup chopped fresh cilantro (Note 5)

1 ½ cups of finely sliced green onion tops (greens only)

Add the ground beef mixture to the rice and gently mix to combine with a large fork or pasta server to avoid breaking the rice grains as much as possible. Sprinkle the chopped green onions and fresh coriander and gently fold through to combine.

To serve, I love this with a few dashes of Louisiana-style hot sauce. I can scarf down a bowl on it's own, but this works really well as a side dish if your main is relatively mild. I've brought this to potlucks many times as part of a buffet and I always go home with an empty platter!!

Notes

1) You can use extra lean beef but lean beef is generally more tender. That said, you will be simmering the beef in the roux so it will become very tender by the end of the simmering.

2) If you don't want to use alcohol, you can use a non-alcohol option but I wouldn't use anything dark. Or you can omit the beer and use extra broth.

3) Poblano has a little heat, not a lot, but definitely some warmth. You can substitute a bell pepper if you're not into the heat, or even a jalapeno along with a bell pepper if you want to amp up the heat.

4) I've used basmati with success, although that is a longer grain rice and can break easily during assembly. I have not tried this with a jasmine or scented rice, or with short grain rice. A plain, medium grain rice works best in my humble opinion.

5) If you're in the cilantro-hater camp, feel free to omit or substitute with parsley for freshness.

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